What is it about the side effects of the popularity of Bath’s Alice Park that B&NES and the police don’t seem to understand?

Full up at the Alice Park car park.

It’s reaching the middle of the school holidays and – on a lovely day – families are enjoying the facilities offered by this little green oasis beside the London Road at the Lambridge end of town.

.Many of them will have brought their cars and that’s where a busy park presents problems and dangers outside the gates.

Looking down from the top end of the Gloucester Road. It’s really reduced to one-way traffic only.

Cars have effectively made most of Gloucester Road a one-way system as they are parked on both sides stretching up towards the crossroads and have blocked one side of the traffic island outside the park.

The road gap on the left is too narrow for anything but the smallest car to get through.

How does an emergency vehicle get up here? And what about the ever danger of a child running out into a road where pavement visibility for a driver is all but non-existent?

This car decided to go to the other side of the traffic island.

One vehicle is even parked on the zig-zags leading up to a pedestrian crossing.

Car parked on zig-zags.

It hasn’t helped that contractors have vehicles parked outside their London Road corner redevelopment – but they can’t be blamed for the planning authority may be looking into parking arrangements before things got started.

This seems to happen every year and so far B&NES have got away with it. You can just see the headlines if someone is killed or injured.

I stopped to take some photographs this morning and was immediately accused – by one gentleman – of being a pervert and taking pictures of children. ‘Get a life’ he said.

l hope he and his family also enjoy long ones but someone in that accident-waiting-to-happen situation may not.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the Alice Park Sub-Committee takes place in the Bath Guildhall on Monday, August 22nd at 5pm. I hope they will have read this article.

I hear they want to encourage people to walk to the park, so maybe double yellow lines down one side of the Gloucester Road would encourage them?

My frustration with all this is that it’s just one more reminder of the (large) gap between what BANES say and what they do.
There’s absolutely no point in saying that walking and cycling, then public transport are your top priorities, if almost everything you do prioritises car use.
My experience in other towns and cities (mainly overseas, but not all) is that you have to make the physical landscape feel safe before people choose to walk and cycle, alongside making using the car difficult (rather than just expensive, which simply prioritises the affluent).
Maybe one day??? I’m not holding my breath.

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